202: YouTube

This comic is pointing out the fact that many of the comments on YouTube videos are insipid and poorly informed, being pointless arguments over some minor topic or factually incorrect position. At the time of this comic, YouTube was fairly new, and the comic's observation about the inanity of YouTube comments was novel. Since then, this observation has become a widely accepted truism about the Internet. In this case, the Moon landing hoaxers are at the receiving end of Randall's pen.

The comment by Rocckir just states that the video is obviously fake, with no evidence or explanation.

The comment from GunPistolMan claims that the video is fake due to the mistaken belief that the Moon would have no gravity, whereas in reality, every object in the universe made of matter has gravity, including the Moon, comets, asteroids, moons of other planets, and so on. The gravity of the Moon is approximately 1/6 the gravity of Earth.

The comment by CrackMonkey74 names Louis Armstrong, a famous jazz musician, who may have waxedlyrical about the moon, but never went there. The ill-informed commenter actually means Neil Armstrong, who was the first person to walk on the Moon. The dare to accuse Armstrong to his face may be a reference to an incident where moon-hoax conspiracy theorist Bart Sibrel confronted Buzz Aldrin and called him "a coward, and a liar, and a thief." Aldrin responded by punching Sibrel; Sibrel's attempt to bring charges was dismissed on the grounds that he had provoked Aldrin to the point where the punch was a justified response.

The comment by SimplePlan2009 presents, likely mocking the other commenters, the ludicrous position that the Moon shot was faked by suggesting that the footage was filmed by actors on Mars, a planet that at its closest approach to Earth is over a hundred times farther away than the Moon. Landing humans on Mars (much less landing enough people and equipment to set up a soundstage) is a feat that has still not been accomplished, and if it had been possible during the Apollo era, the landing on the Moon would have been a trivial task in comparison. In other words, why go through all the trouble of faking it, if doing it for real would have been no trouble at all? This may be a reference to the Futurama film Into the Wild Green Yonder, in which Richard Nixon states that he "really did stage the moon landing... ON VENUS!"

This comic was published in December 2006. In July 2009, a restored video showing Neil Armstrong's first moonwalk was uploaded to YouTube. User Michael Huang copied to that video's comments section all the sentences in this comic. Then, after some other users took some of his comments seriously, he later added another comment stating, "This entire comment chain is from the famous webcomic, xkcd." The comments are copied verbatim, including typos and grammar errors. The only mistake is in the first comment: Michael Huang included only one question mark when the comic has three of them.

Discussion

In the transcript, it says simpleplan2009's comment was posted 3 minutes ago. However, in the image, it clearly says 5 minutes. Caagr98 (talk) 19:01, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree. In theory a 3 and a 5 could be hand-written to be hard to differentiate, but here it is clear. Changed. (And added the first line.) Mark Hurd (talk) 10:56, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Changed it back, as the actual transcript on the comic page (as seen in the webpage source, and upon which the comic searches are based) says "3". I've added the reasoning in the explanation. NixillUmbreon (talk) 15:31, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The image is the first source for the transcript here. Randall's transcript simply doesn't match the image.--Dgbrt (talk) 22:11, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Not needing a mention in the explanation, but thank you for the link. Richard Feynman would be glowing in his grave at the state of science education in this country. 108.162.219.223 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Frankly, oh God that is TERRIBLE. The PHYSICS STUDENTS thought that light items float on the Moon but heavy things don't? That... That's worse than the Flat Earth Society! That's right, Jacky720 just signed this (talk | contribs) 23:17, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

The British sketch comedy TV show That Mitchell and Webb Look has an excellent Moon Landing Sketch with similar humor to this joke. Beolach (talk) 22:18, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

I think that it's possible the video is the Astronaut music video by Simple Plan. Led to believe it by the username simpleplan2009 108.162.216.124 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

American sheep are very offended by this. if sheep could read. --Dalonacueball (talk) 17:27, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Since the very first time I read this panel, I have wished that the alt-text gave a reply to the 'Americans are Sheep' comment: "I did not have sexual relations with that sheep! -BillClintonPOTUS"172.68.54.127 03:56, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
172.68.54.127 03:53, 16 November 2016 (UTC)